The Fall
2013 grim crime series starring Gillian Anderson. First season release (May-June 2013) Format At home, with Mum. Journal After Gillian Anderson did an AMA on Reddit and mentioned it, and I realised Mum had mentioned intending to watch it, I signed up. Episode 1 Watched the first episode some time in May. It was a bit hard to see what we were supposed to be enjoying about it, if I recall, but not enough to stop from watching the next episode. 0 Episode 2 Watched with Mum and Sarah on the 28th. It is so bleak, I don't know why I'm actually watching it. It's almost perverse, the amount of depth you get into the events surrounding a serial killing and the calmness of its presentation. From the grieving family, the private intensity of the killing, the treatment of the body, the emotional toil on the police officer who found the body, the sexual behaviour of Gillian Anderson's character, the humanity of the killer's wife, the emerging effects on the killer's daughter, the killer's 15 year old babysitter spending time alone with him in the house, wet, and trying to seduce him. It's just WTF moments over and over again. -1 Episode 3 Watched with Mum on the 17th of June. I'd sort of given up on the series but we saw Matthew this weekend and he said he was really liking it. This one was much better than the last one, so I'm happy to continue on now. 1 Episode 4 Watched with Mum on the 18th of June. This is the penultimate episode, and it was also good, but it's quickly coming to its conclusion now. I feel like it could have been twice as long, so I'm quickly trying to realign my perspective to prepare for the next episode finishing it off :P 1 Episode 5 Watched with Mum on the 20th of June. Good! Definitely room to continue but this would be, to me, a perfectly satisfactory ending. Rating 1 Second season release (? - 18th December 2014) Format On TV with Mum as they came out. Journal We rewatched the last episode of Season 1 to catch up the night before this season started, and it was still compelling. We watched this season as it came out, and though there was only one dud episode and it was quite watchable, I think I'd have to criticise how slow it sometimes was. They made a deliberate stylistic choice to drag it out so that you had time to really feel the weight of what was happening, but I think they went too far. Still, I appreciate that they tried something different and enjoyed it some of the time. Rating 1 Season 3 (November 2016...) Format At my apartment in Oizumi Journal Episode 1 On the evening of November 27th I was bored after a quiet weekend and casting about for things to do instead of kanji practice. I watched a couple of episodes of Westworld, the latest episode of QI, played some Pokemon Moon, and after refreshing Facebook and Reddit so many times I was going mad I ended up going to Netflix and discovering that a third season of The Fall had started without my realising. I watched the first episode, and it was its usual grim morbid self :P It seemed to spend a lot of time on the medical drama of dealing with the shooting victims of the last season's finale, and left me wondering what I was supposed to be getting out of it. But we'll see where it goes. Realised the young Irish police officer guy from the last season is the same actor as Leo Elster in Humans, season 2 of which I was watching at the time! He looks so different in this series, it's weird. Episode 2 Watched on December 2nd or 3rd. Good episode. Not a lot happened, but the mood and situation continues to be interesting. Wasn't expecting Spector to wake up with total memory loss; it'll be interesting to see where that goes. Episode 3 December 4th. I CAN'T TELL IF HE'S FAKING OR NOT!! Like I was 90% sure he wasn't because his reactions were too genuine seeming, not to mention the presumable difficulty of accurately and consistently faking amnesia, but then at the end when he was alone in his room I was so sure he was going to grin right before it cut. Hmmm! Episode 4 December 8th. Not much really happened. I'm trying to figure out if Stella has fallen for Spector. I feel like she has. Not sure if it's going to become a big thing. Still not sure if Spector is faking but it's fun imagining he isn't and what it must be like to find out you're capable of being that twisted. I think either he's faking though or he's at least not as squeaky clean as he's pretending, since he had that kind of moment where he dominated his cellmate and looked all pleased with himself. It's funny - I remember him seeming so small and meek compared to the Irish mobster types he ran into in the first season! Episode 5 and 6 December 11th maybe, and 13th. Wow. Crikey. What. So my mother told me she had watched up to episode 7 while I was still only on 4, and that we should watch episode 8 together. Only there isn't 8 episodes is there? So I watched episode 6 the night before mum wanted to watch episode 8, planning to watch episode 7 as well and be ready. Episode 6 ends and I'm like whaaaaaaaat, and wondering how the hell it's going to continue for 2 more episodes. I started thinking Stella was in for some kind of inquiry and that the title The Fall was referring to how this one case was going to bring so many people tumbling down. But then I came back from a toilet break and noticed that Netflix hadn't queued up the next episode... Anyway. I really enjoyed this season. Such fantastic acting and I really like the way it lingers and dwells on things without them having to be a Chekov's gun - it pulls you in to the world. It took some getting used to and it was often very disturbing at the beginning, but once you get used to it you want more. A great and unique serial killer drama. Not sure if I'll ever watch it again or not though... Rating 2 Category:Works Category:TV series Category:British TV series Category:Crime TV series Category:Serial killer TV series Category:2010s TV series Category:TV series watched in 2013 Category:TV series watched in 2014 Category:TV series watched in 2016 Category:TV series with 1 rating Category:TV series with 2 rating